Baby Travel Gear with buybuy BABY

From the moment that Benny was born, and even before while I was pregnant, I've been dreaming about our first tropical trip together. Fast forward to present day, and we're currently getting ourselves ready to take on a beautiful resort in Mexico with a baby! As excited as I am to travel together as a family for the first time, I'm a little nervous when it comes to baby gear and packing.

Long time readers of the blog know that I'm an advocate for only travelling with a carry on and while I know that won't be possible with a baby, I still want to pack light. With so much in terms of travel baby gear, I want to explore all of my options for this trip while still being mindful of the amount of stuff in our suitcases. It's easy to go overboard, but equally simple to forget to pick up something essential to travelling with a baby.

Enter buybuy BABY. Easily the most comprehensive children's store that we have access to, buybuy BABY was my first choice when looking for travel gear with a baby. I love the ease of perusing their website for travel gear that suits our needs, as well as how helpful the in-store staff is. After doing a lot of research, consulting the reviews on the website and some blind faith in my own mama instincts, here are the items that we selected from buybuy BABY for traveling to Mexico with baby Benny.

UPPAbaby MINU stroller

You guys know how much I love my UPPAbaby VISTA stroller - so much so that I wrote an entire post on why they're worth the investment. It is a little heavy though, and considering we would be making a few transfers from condo to airport, and then again from airport to resort, I thought it best to make the trip with a travel stroller. Because we are both so impressed with the UPPAbaby brand, selecting the UPPAbaby MINU was a no brainer. I love how the MINU has the same quality that you would expect from the UPPAbaby brand, but with added perks of a compact travel stroller - mainly how light it is, and how easy it is to collapse (you can do it one-handed!) I also picked up the stroller-specific travel bag that actually insures your MINU stroller, and adapters to use with the MESA car seat for any future trips.

I never thought that I would be one to get excited over a stroller, but I am so excited to travel with the UPPAbaby MINU. I think that we made the right choice going with a travel stroller, and it will continue to be useful for all other trips.

Crib Sheets

Keeping in the spirit of travelling as light as possible with a baby, we opted to rent a crib at our resort in Mexico rather than travelling with a pack and play or our own travel crib. Even still, I thought it best to bring our own crib sheets with us, and I found the absolute cutest ones at buybuy BABY! Look at those patterns - I can't! I'll be travelling with them washed, so hopefully the familiar scent of home with help Benny with the sleep adjustment when we get to Mexico.

PeaPod Travel Bed

Although we're relying on a crib for bedtime and naps with Benny at our resort, I wanted to make sure that he would have a shaded area to play and relax in while Brian and I are sunning ourselves by the pool. The PeaPod Travel Bed looks to be absolutely genius, and has the best reviews on the buybuyBABY website. When it arrived to our condo, I couldn't believe how small this travel tent folds down to - it can actually fit in a carry-on suitcase! I think the PeaPod Travel Bed will be a game changer, not only when we're in Mexico but also for summers at the cottage and any other warm-weather travel with baby.

Baby Float

Even before Brian and I were married, my heart would melt when we were at a resort and would see babies floating around in the pool with their parents. I knew that once the day came that we would be travelling with our own baby, I wanted the same inflatable pool toy. Of course I was able to find the  Anchor Infant Baby Spring Float with Sun Canopy at buybuy BABY - they seriously have everything! I love how this particular model has a shaded canopy on top to keep Benny safe from the sun. I literally cannot wait to put this toy to good use and play with Benny in our resort's pool!

Toys

Pool toys aside, I knew that we would need at least one toy to help keep Benny entertained while we would be lounging in our room. Finding toys on buybuyBABY is a no-brainer; their selection is absolutely incredible. For Benny, I know that he loves bright lights and music so this Baby Einstein Octopus Orchestra will be perfect. I'm confident that Benny will have the best time playing with this toy while mom and dad enjoy an in-room cocktail on the patio. HA - we'll see how that goes!

Sun Protection

Benny will be six months old when we travel to Mexico, so he will be at the age where it's safe to use sunscreen. I wanted to make sure that we selected a baby friendly sunscreen that was made from natural ingredients. Of course buybuy BABY was able to deliver, so we picked up the Sun Bum Baby Bum natural sunscreen with SPF 30. I also picked out this cute sun hat for Benny. I'm so impressed with the selection at buybuy BABY for sun protection - they even carry swimsuits and rash guards with UVA defence!

I'm so impressed with buybuy BABY; not only for the selection when it came to choosing travel-friendly baby gear for our upcoming trip, but also how easy it was with delivery to our condo. With our baby gear secured, our bags packed and some blind optimism for Benny's first plane ride, I'm looking forward to our first resort experience with Benny.

Bon Voyage!

Joëlle

This post was created in partnership with buybuy BABY. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.

Baby Sleep and Sleep Training

Baby sleep: it seems to be the only thing that's on your mind once your bundle of joy arrives and dominates all baby-related conversation. Myself I found that I was answering the same questions over and over again from well-meaning family and friends. "How is baby sleeping?" or "Is he a good sleeper?" Coupled with the unpredictability of a new baby's sleep schedule and how important a mother's need for sleep is, it really does seem like sleep dominates your life.

This blog post will detail Benny's sleep patterns as a newborn, the inevitable and dreaded four month sleep regression we faced and our choice to sleep train. Sleep training is a personal choice, and one I found out that can be quite controversial. Let me be clear: I am an adult in my mid-thirties with a degree in Psychology and a capacity for rational thought. Both Brian and I were comfortable with our decision to sleep train, but totally respect the individual decisions of others. Infant sleep and the decision to sleep train is a decision that each parent makes for themselves and varies from one child to the next.

Now, with that out of the way, let me tell you about Benny's sleep from when he was a newborn, through the sleep regression and our experience sleep training with Amanda from Baby's Best Sleep.

Benny's Sleep from Newborn to 4 Months

It's known that newborns have a pretty unpredictable sleep schedule, but Benny really surprised us from the beginning by being a great little sleeper. While he never slept through the night, we were usually able to get multiple 3-4 hour stretches of sleep at night with multiple naps during the day.

Here's the details on sleep from Benny's early days:

• We never had Benny on any sort of sleep schedule. We would follow his sleep cues for naps (rubbing red eyes, throwing his head and body back) and act quickly on them. 

• Benny would breastfeed on demand with a pumped bottle of breastmilk in the evenings so aside from the bottle, his eating schedule lacked any sort of specific structure.

• Benny slept in a bassinet beside our bed at night, and took his naps in the same bassinet that we would move into the living room during the day. We were never concerned with daylight or blackout conditions.

• In terms of props for sleep, we used a pacifier to help sooth Benny to sleep for both night time sleep and nap. For night time sleep, we used a sleep sack. While we would sometimes use a white noise machine, most times we would forget.

So aside from knowing Benny's sleep cues and acting quick on them, the first four months of Benny's life saw very little structure. While he slept for fairly long stretches at night, his naps would cap at 30 minutes at the most. Sometimes he would nap at home, most times it would be in the stroller as we took on the city during the warm summer and milder fall months. While it wasn't perfect, and he certainly wasn't sleeping completely through the night, we were able to create a shared schedule around Benny's sleep cues that saw us both getting adequate sleep. We were even experimenting with successful naps with Benny in his crib! It was very do-able and we figured that we would naturally transition to longer periods of sleep.

4 Month Sleep Regression

Just when we thought we had a handle on Benny's sleep, the dreaded four month sleep regression reared it's ugly head. Naps, unless they were taken in the stroller, became nonexistent. I would spend longer trying to get Benny down for a nap than he would end of sleeping. The same went for night time sleep. We would spend upwards to an hour trying to rock Benny to sleep, only to have him wake up 1-2 hours after going down, and continue to wake up every two hours throughout the night.

Needless to say, our once rock-solid sleep routine that ensured that both Brian and I got adequate sleep to function during the day went out the window. It was Benny's world and Brian and I were just trying to survive on a mere few precious hours of sleep.

Now I've never been someone who needed a lot of sleep to function, but trying to survive the day-to-day with an infant on a few hours of sleep was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I found myself irritable, unable to hold a conversation and would get waves of nausea throughout the day. It's important to note that I work for myself as a freelancer and did not allocate any time for a maternity leave. Trying to not only survive but keep my business afloat during one of the busiest times in the industry (the holidays) was borderline impossible. I felt like I was drowning.

Sleep Training - The Process

Thankfully I had connected with Amanda Jewson of Baby's Best Sleep in order to create a custom sleep training plan with Benny. Amanda is one of those amazing women who's glowing reputation proceeds her, so I was actually very familiar with her work before she had even reached out. What I liked most about Amanda's approach is that it was completely tailored to not only Benny's unique situation, but Brian and I's preferences.

The reason that Brian and I decided to pursue formal sleep training is because we recognize how important Benny's sleep is to our overall quality of life, and it wasn't something that we wanted to mess around trying to perfect on our own. Based on the fact that it was basically a free-for-all with Benny's feeding and sleep schedule prior to sleep training, we knew that we needed to rely on an expert to help guide us into a more routine way of life. Plus, we know ourselves as a couple and could already predict that sleep training on our own would lead to differences of opinions, frustrations and fights. Best to just leave the important stuff to the experts.

After filling out a detailed questionnaire about Benny's sleep, Amanda doing a full assessment on Benny, having a formal sleep plan sent over and a phone call with Amanda, we were ready to begin the process of sleep training.

Now, because we chose one of Amanda's personalized sleep plans I'll go through the basics of what our sleep training plan included, however it's important to note that this plan is specifically for Benny. Amanda offers the same tailored and personalized sleep plans if you're looking for a more involved sleep training process like we were, however she does also offer a fabulous DIY online course for families who want to sleep train on their own.

Here's the nitty gritty of our sleep training:

• The first night we started our new sleep schedule, and night one of sleep training, Amanda came to our condo to explain and support. I cannot even tell you how valuable this was, and how imperative I think Amanda being there was to our sleep training success. Although I knew that there would be some crying involved, with our personalized plan we were able to go in to the nursery every twelve minutes to sooth and comfort Benny. With Amanda's support, we were able to decipher between a true cry and a protest, and while we did go to comfort Benny multiple times, his cries never intensified (on a scale of 1 to 10, his cries only got to about a 6.) It took one full hour on the dot from the time we placed Benny in his crib to when he fell asleep.

• We removed all crutches for Benny's sleep (for him that meant his pacifier) and placed him in his crib drowsy but awake. This allowed him to practice and learn self-soothing, something that continues to be a valuable tool for him.

• We developed a solid and consistent sleep routine that we practice every night for night-sleep, and a modified version for daytime naps. For us, at night our routine includes feeding, a warm bath, gentle lotion massage, PJs, sleep sack, reading a book, white noise on and down in the crib. We practice the same routine (minus the bath) before all naps.

• Our daytime nap routine depended on a 'wake window' of 2 hours in between sleeps, so our naps look different most days. It's hard to explain how it happened, because I honestly still don't know, but once we nailed down our night sleep the naps just started to fall into place. Now I can expect at least one nap that last's over an hour and a half per day, with two short naps as well. It's been a huge game changer.

• Benny will now go down to bed extremely easily after our bedtime routine and will sleep through the night with feeding anywhere between 2 to 3:30am. To me, this is a huge success because previously he was waking up almost every hour and would be a nightmare to get down to bed. We're keeping his night feed until he has a good routine with solids because Benny is a bit on the smaller side and his doctor and I feel like he needs the extra calories.

Our New Routine (Roughly)

6:30 - Wakeup

-Feed twice during wake window

8:30AM - Nap 1 (crib)

-Feed another one or two times

-Lots of playing after nap

11:30AM Nap 2 (crib)

-Feed and play in between

3:30PM Nap 3 (usually in crib, but sometimes in the stroller for an afternoon walk)
-feed twice with lots of play time

6:30 - 7:00PM - Start bedtime routine

7:00-7:30PM - Bed time in crib.

Basically we try to operate on a 2ish hour wake window for naps during the day, with a longer stretch of awake time between Benny's last nap and bedtime. I like to feed Benny twice between each nap, especially since he's still breastfed and seems to do best when he's good and full.

My Thoughts On Sleep Training

Now that it's all said and done, we have a more predictable sleep routine and calm has fallen upon our household again, here are my thoughts on sleep training and the sleep training process:

• Sleep training was a fairly simple process, but that doesn't mean that it was easy. I found it to be extremely tough and am so thankful that we chose to go with a personalized sleep coach. Honestly, without Amanda's support, I would have given up somewhere around the third day. I found it so helpful to not only have her expertise to answer questions that came up along the way, but also offer us a sense of accountability. 

• Be prepared to grapple with a sense of guilt throughout the process. For me, I started to feel massive mom guilt once the process was almost over and we were onto a more regular sleep routine - how backwards is that?! The fact that Benny was getting long stretches of sleep made me almost miss how much time we spent together and I started to feel guilty. Thankfully that feeling quickly passed and I'm now just so grateful for daytime sleep and cry-free nights.

• The process works, but you need to be prepared to put in the work. Myself, that meant canceling plans and clearing my schedule for a few days so that we could really work on our sleep routine. I'm not someone who does well with routines, so I had a hard time with temporarily slowing down my life and almost fought it at first. If I had just stuck with the routine right from the beginning and embraced a slower life for a few days, I'm confident that we would have completed the sleep training process earlier.

• Baby sleep will never be perfect. Just when I think we have everything down, the routine changes. Currently we're dealing with teething and a possible shift to only two naps during the day. To me, this is when the true value of sleep training comes into play since I'm less panicked when our routine changes and have the tools to get us back on track. 

In the end, I'm very happy with our sleep training experience and am one hundred percent confident in our choice. I'm so thankful to Amanda from Baby's Best Sleep for essentially giving me my sanity back and helping me crawl out of a very dark period. I'm much happier these days, Benny is well-rested and thriving and in the end that's the best outcome that we could have ever hoped for.

What do you guys think? Have you ever tried sleep training your baby? Did you use a professional sleep coach? Let me know.

xo Joëlle


This post was created in partnership with Baby's Best Sleep. My thoughts, opinions and experiences are 100% my own.

Prince Edward County in the Off Season

I love road trips - I really do. There's something about just packing up as much or as little as you want, without restriction, into a vehicle and just taking off. Living in Toronto we're very lucky that there are so many beautiful destinations nearby, all within a few hours drive from the city. I've never turned down the opportunity to explore our beautiful province of Ontario, and I was hoping that the addition of a baby to our little family wouldn't change that.

For that reason, when we were getting a little cabin crazy from the time necessary to spend at home with a newborn, Brian and I decided to check out Prince Edward County in the fall. It would be our first road trip with Benny - our first trip at all! I have always loved Prince Edward County (in fact I have previously been on a girly brand trip, as well as with friends)  but had never visited in the off season. I knew it would be a slower pace, which would be welcome as we explored our first experience traveling with a baby. All in all, I couldn't wait to take off as a family of three and check out what The County had to offer in the Fall.

Where We Stayed

Because I had such fond memories of my last trip to PEC, and I desperately wanted to show Brian what I think is one of the nicest Airbnbs in the province, we decided on The Meadow House.  My goodness, do I ever love this light-filled, beautifully decorated space. Located in Hillier, which is a great starting point to visit all of our planned destinations in The County, The Meadow House is a literal oasis of style and sanctuary.

One of the reasons I love staying at The Meadow House is that while gorgeous, it's actually a very comfortable and practical space for a weekend's stay - or longer, if your itinerary calls for it. Traveling with a baby, I knew that we would appreciate the comforts that come along with staying in a proper house; a kitchen for meals, a second bedroom for optimal baby sleep and even laundry should we need it.

Visiting Prince Edward County in the off season means that your trip will have a slower pace as the hustle and bustle of seasonal shops and restaurants are closed until Spring. Making sure that the space that you choose to stay during the off season can make or break your trip. Besides, gone are the days of running from destination to destination - traveling with a baby forces you to slow down and spend more time enjoying your accommodations. I'm very happy that we ultimately chose The Meadow House.

*Check out my previous post on Prince Edward County for more photos and details on The Meadow House.

Where We Ate

While Brian and I knew that we would be taking a slower pace while visiting Prince Edward County in the Fall, so there would be lots of relaxing at the Airbnb involved, we did want to take advantage of the amazing restaurant scene that can be found in The County.

La Condesa

Right in the heart of Wellington, La Condesa blew our socks off with authentic Mexican cuisine and absolutely delicious cocktails. The restaurant just opened in the spring of 2019, so it was still fairly new when we visited, but WOW - what an incredible addition to Prince Edward County!

Brian and I started with hearty guacamole with home-made corn chips and tostones, which are fried green plantains with lemon aioli. Followed by nearly every taco they had on the menu and washed down with expertly crafted cocktails, we finished the meal wondering if maybe we should consider moving to The County if this is how they're eating (then we got the bill - still Toronto prices, you can't escape it!) The best part is that the staff were incredibly accommodating with Benny and his car seat, making sure that we had a table that would be able to accommodate and didn't make us feel as though we were an imposition.  

Ten out of ten. And the best part is that because we were visiting in the off-season, this hotspot was able to accommodate us for a table right away. We will be back

Bloomfield Public House

While we only stopped in for a quick coffee, Bloomfield Public House offers deliciously rich espresso-based drinks and looked to be a beautiful spot for brunch in The County and still very lively even in the off-season. The coffee was strong, and necessary after a morning of driving. So happy to see more options for espresso-based drinks in The County.

Drake Devonshire Inn

I couldn't visit Prince Edward County without stopping by Drake Devonshire Inn for brunch. The Drake is a beautiful spot to visit in the summer and proved to be just as busy during the off-season - I'm glad that we made reservations! 

Although I missed dinning on The Drake's lakeside patio, it was beautiful to have that same view while being toasty and warm indoors in the off-season. We enjoyed classic brunch fare and strong coffee to fuel us before we left The County.

Another family-friendly spot, the Drake Devonshire Inn not only accommodated Benny and his carseat without hesitation, but they also had a great washroom with a change table and offered me a quiet spot to nurse before we hit the road back to Toronto. 

Road Trip With A Baby: What We Packed

Seeing as though this was our first trip ever with Benny, we were a little clueless on what to pack. I'm someone who gets very overwhelmed with a lot of stuff, so we tried to pack as light as possible and make due with what was available to us at The Meadow House. Here's everything that we packed for a road trip with one overnight with a 4 month old baby:

• Our Uppababy VISTA stroller
• MESA car seat (can be clipped into the stroller base)
• 2 sleepers
• 2 baby outfits
• 1 sleep sack
• 1 swaddle
• 1 toy keyboard
• 1 book
• Enough diapers and wipes for 3 days (just in case) with a portable change mat

..and that's it. Honestly I was happy to see that we really didn't need all that much stuff, considering that Benny is exclusively breast fed and was too young to walk or crawl at the time of travel. 

The one grey area for us came down to sleep. We were driving up in our compact car, so bringing a pack-and-play or any type of travel crib along with Benny's stroller wasn't possible. We ended up just co-sleeping for the night which, while it worked, proved to be quite stressful as it was something that we had never done before. If I were to change anything, I would have brought either something to facilitate co-sleeping (like our Snuggle Me Organic) or researched a compact travel bed. 

After a blissful weekend getaway (or as close to blissful as traveling with a baby will allow) we were back on the road to make the short trip to Toronto. I absolutely loved spending a quiet weekend away with our little family, and saw Prince Edward County in a totally different light. While you miss out on the hustle-and-bustle of the busy summer, visiting Prince Edward County in the off-season offers a beauty and tranquility that you wouldn't necessarily experience in the warmer weather. I'm so happy that we chose Prince Edward County in the Fall as our first family road trip, and I can't wait to see where else our little trio will visit next.

What do you guys think? Have you ever traveled with a baby on a road trip? Have you visited Prince Edward County in the Fall? Let me know!

xo Joëlle